


Don't Care Who Knows

by patchesjames



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-01
Updated: 2013-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-27 18:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/665110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchesjames/pseuds/patchesjames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Shit.” Derek gritted out, throwing his comforter away from his body and scrambling out of bed. He knew he had told the betas to come by at some point and see the new apartment. But he hadn’t thought Scott and Jackson would be strolling up his building’s steps to the top floor (“why do you have to live so high up, so you can prove to yourself that you can jump into even your own window and creep on yourself”) only two days after all his furniture had been delivered and he had been spent his first night on his new mattress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Care Who Knows

**Author's Note:**

> Getting my feet wet in the Teen Wolf fandom. Ficlet about Derek's new apartment. I know Jackson isn't in season three, but let's just pretend he is.

“He’s gotta’ be up.”

“I don’t know man.”

“Please, he’s probably pounded down fifteen egg whites by now and is doing dead lifts and squats in his new living room.”

Derek was half asleep and mentally mocking himself for having as boring of a dream as Scott and Jackson discussing whether or not he was awake by 11 a.m. on a Sunday. And he didn’t even know what an egg white was let alone had the ability to consume more than a dozen of them. If he didn’t know the term egg white, how had he been dreaming of?

“Shit.” Derek gritted out, throwing his comforter away from his body and scrambling out of bed. He knew he had told the betas to come by at some point and see the new apartment. He was trying this thing that Stiles referred to as “not being completely antisocial and apathetic and angry all the time, basically no adjectives that begin with a except for affable and amiable”. The first thing that Derek had bought for the new apartment had been a dictionary. But he hadn’t thought Scott and Jackson would be strolling up his building’s steps to the top floor (“why do you have to live so high up, so you can prove to yourself that you can jump into even your own window and creep on yourself”) only two days after all his furniture had been delivered and he had spent his first night on his new mattress. He tripped over a pair of basketball shorts as he made his way towards the door and tugged them on. He was halfway down the spiral staircase (“I’m seriously going to puke every time I come up here”) when he noticed that the shorts were snug around his thighs and were about halfway above his knees. He rolled his eyes as he made his way to the front door, already preparing for Jackson’s “short short” jokes.

He pulled the door open (“Is that stained glass? Nice job, Quasimodo”) to reveal Scott McCall with his hand lifted mid-knock and Jackson scowling behind him. 

Scott smiled and Jackson grumbled something like, “one day we’ll get him.”

Derek blearily followed Scott and Jackson into the kitchen. “It was nice of you guys to stop by and all but did you forget the part where I didn’t invite you?”

Jackson was running his hands along Derek’s mahogany cabinets and ignoring him. “Couldn’t spring for the stainless steel, millionaire?”

Derek sighed. “Just because it’s not trendy doesn’t mean it’s not classy.” He paused. “Or cheap.” Derek had spent almost four days in Ikea going over kitchen furniture. The Hale kitchen had always been his favorite room as a kid. He could still remember the white circular stain on the floor when he had dropped a burning pot when his five year old self had attempted to help his mom cook spaghetti. His mom had had tall, opposing steel cabinets. But as he had followed Stiles around from store to store and contractor to contractor and the usually opinionated boy had kept his mouth shut, something about wanting Derek to make his own space , and the only comment made was an almost whisper about “my mom always liking mahogany” Derek had decided wood over steel. It was worth it to see Stiles grab one end of a cabinet with the delivery guy and Derek having to catch him by throwing arms around back before he tripped backwards down the steps and almost plummeted to his “sure death”.

“Hale.” Jackson huffed.

Derek blinked and returned his focus to the two boys in front of him. “What?”

“Nice shorts.”

“I knew you were gonna’ say-“

“Wait,” Jackson stopped, pressing his hand to Derek’s chest and sending him an accusatory glance. “You hear that?”

Derek’s brows automatically knitted as he shared a glance with a perpetually confused Scott McCall. “Hear what?”

“That heartbeat.”

Derek tried not to gulp. He was sure that his apartment smelled of Stiles, but it smelled like all of the pack in one way or another. Jackets left behind, books exchanged, the works. He didn’t know how well Scott knew the pattern of Stiles’ heartbeat. It unnerved Derek a bit to realize that he hadn’t even heard it because the sound had become a familiar, secondary background beat to him.

“Hale!” Jackson’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “Did you score after the pack meeting last night?”

“Shh,” Derek admonished, pretending that the drunk stranger he had in his bed was a light sleeper.

Jackson’s eyes danced and a smile took up his whole face. “So where’d you meet her?”

Derek sat down on a stool at the island and put his head in his hands. “Jackson, shut up.”

“One night stand, friend with benefit, casual fuck buddy?”

“Jackson,” Derek growled, his eyes flashing red at the term ‘fuck buddy’. “Shut up.”

Jackson frowned before smirking, “You got any food?”

Derek’s turn to huff. “No,” He grunted, grabbing Jackson by the arm and leading him towards the door. “Now get out and let me go back to sleep.”

“Fine, fine,” Jackson laughed. And even if he was a rich, spoiled son of a bitch it was good to see the kid laugh after the year he had had, that they all had had. “C’mon, McCall.”

But Scott wasn’t listening; his hands were wrapped around the white circular disc on Derek’s kitchen table. 

“Uh,” Derek started. “It’s a-“

“Trivet plate.” Scott finished, his fingers tightening around the plate. Derek winced. Stiles had told him, off hand one night, when he’d had a little bit too much of the wine the realtor had sent over as a thank you, not knowing that her werewolf client couldn’t have enjoyed even a drop of it, about the plates. They’d learned how to make them in the fourth grade. When his mom was sick and Scott’s dad’s weekend business trips were growing more and more frequent. Stiles had leaned further back into the couch, the wine glass slipping lower and lower in his fingers before Derek had plucked the glass out of his hand, as he explained, “Our teacher taught us how to make the plaster too, it wasn’t just decorating them, it was like a scene from fucking ghost. We sculpted them, built them, decorated them.” The younger boy had stopped, letting out a sigh and tipping his head back onto the couch. Derek’s eyes had followed Stiles’ adam’s apple as it had bobbed up and down. “Then one weekend my dad had to spend the whole weekend at the hospital and Mrs. McCall watched us. Scott and I made at least ten hot plates that weekend. Stuff like ‘best friends forever’ and ‘number one mom’.” Stiles had fallen asleep before he could continue, but Derek could tell from the boy’s tone of voice that the latter plate had most likely ended up without use. 

“Did Stiles make you this?” Scott asked, his brown eyes rising up to meet Derek’s. His voice sounded betrayed.

Derek wanted to lower his eyes, to lie, and say that he bought it at a dollar store, but he was the alpha, he couldn’t lower his eyes, and he wasn’t embarrassed. “Yeah, he said something about being good at them and not wanting to burn my overpriced, pretentious kitchen counters, when he had to feed my rag tag pack.” Derek smirked, attempting to raise the line of Scott’s mouth along with his. Instead Scott flinched. Derek knew Scott and Jackson had struck up some sort of offbeat friendship and Stiles was not the first one to understand it. The gears in Scott’s mind seemed to turn, figuring out that his best friend needed somewhere to hang out when Scott had Alison, Isaac, and now Jackson to keep him company. Derek wanted to roll his eyes and knock their heads together. If only Scott knew how often Stiles liked to wax poetic about how Scott’s ability to see the good in everyone would get him killed, but was also his best quality.

Scott ran his hand over the large, grey wolf on the bottom right of the plate before putting it down and nodding. Derek was good at using his senses and reading when situations were significant. He knew something had just changed, but he wasn’t sure what.  
He was even more confused when Scott loped over and clapped him on the shoulder, dredged up a smile from somewhere and said, “Nice place, man, it suits you.”

Jackson was by the front door tapping his foot like a put upon wife. “And now that this touching moment over cooking supplies has ended, can we go?”

“Sure thing, Lydia, I mean Jackson,” Scott replied, before opening the front door and walking out into the hallway. Jackson clenched closed his mouth which had fallen open and flounced out after him.

Derek shook his head before slowly climbing the steps back up to his bedroom. 

“Are they gone?” Stiles’ voice always sounded like his vocal chords had been ran through a garbage disposal when he just woke up.

“Yeah, they’re gone,” Derek shucked off the basketball shorts and pulled on a pair of sweats, that he was pretty sure were also Stiles' when they fell an inch short above his ankles.

“Mmm,” Stiles pressed his face into Derek’s eighty-dollar pillow. “Come back to bed.”

A warm pit pooled at the bottom of Derek’s stomach before he padded across the floor and climbed in behind the younger boy.

Stiles wasted no time in rolling onto Derek’s chest and pressing his face into Derek’s “man breasts” as he referred to them. 

(“They’re called pectorals, you imbecile.”

“Yeah, but they’re as big as breasts. Not boobs, that implies that they are fat and floppy. These are most definitely breasts.”)

Derek ran his hand over the back of Stiles head, he missed the feeling of the slight prickle against his hand, but didn’t mind running his fingers through the longer, soft strands. He thought Stiles had just about fallen back to sleep when a quiet voice asked, “Do you think they knew I was here?”

“Well, Scott McCall is about three more hints away from figuring it out, so that does not bode well for the rest of the human race discovering our secret.”

Stiles snorted into Derek’s chest. “The world isn’t ready for this jelly.”

“Shut up,” Derek replied running his chin over Stiles’ head and tightening his arms around his back. He wanted to shake the kid on his chest tell him that he was an idiot, that his best friend loved him, and that he didn’t care who the fuck knew that he slipped into the alpha’s bed at least nine times a month. But for now he was content to hold on and let that secondary heartbeat lull him back to sleep.


End file.
